A Conservative government would give patients the right to choose an individual named consultant for an operation or course of hospital treatment, David Cameron said today.

Under current NHS rules in England, patients are allowed a choice of hospital from a menu including all NHS trusts and private clinics that are able to meet NHS standards on cost and quality.

But the Tory leader said choice of hospital was not enough and people should be able to pick the individual specialist.

During a visit to Stafford, where the hospital was exposed by the Healthcare Commission last month for providing an "appalling" standard of care to patients admitted in an emergency, he published a fresh Tory health policy document, 'An NHS information revolution to save lives'.

It said: "Hospitals should be in a position to offer patients and GPs choice of referral to a named consultant or a generic referral to the hospital, recognising that patients may themselves have to decide whether they want faster treatment or access to a named consultant."

The proposal is likely to be popular among some GPs, but may be resisted by hospital consultants who emphasise the importance of medical teams, rather than the skills of individuals.

In 1987, Lady Thatcher said she used private medicine instead of the NHS "to enable me to go into the hospital on the day I want, at the time I want and with the surgeon I want – for me, that's absolutely vital".

Under current arrangements, NHS patients get the hospital of their choice and more or less the time of their choice, within an 18-week maximum wait. Cameron's extra pledge would give all NHS patients the benefits Thatcher had by going private.

He attacked a "closed culture within our hospitals", adding: "There's too little information available to the public about the problems that exist – meaning problems can be hushed up, brushed under the carpet and not exposed until it's far too late."

The policy paper said: "Most current information on the NHS is too general to be useful, such as the performance of large NHS trusts. We will provide information at the level of individual hospitals and, in some cases, on individual departments within them.

"On infections, for example, a patient with heart problems needs to know, not just whether the hospital has a high MRSA rate, but whether there have been problems in a particular department, eg cardiology, in which he or she will be treated. This information could be easily collected by trusts and published to inform patient choice."

Cameron said: "We'll measure those things that people really care about: how long will my dad survive if he gets cancer, what happens after my initial treatment, how does a hospital do on issues like infections? We will collect patients' views on all aspects of their care via a simple questionnaire. And we will allow patients to give immediate feedback to hospitals about any bad care they have endured. We'll compile all this information in a meaningful and accessible way that can be easily understood, and let every patient compare and contrast different care providers. And we'll then let patients, with their GPs, pick precisely where they want to be treated."

The Department of Health said the decision on whether patients should be able to choose a named consultant is a local matter. A spokeswoman said: "The ability to make a referral where you name an individual clinician has always been possible through Choose and Book [the NHS's computerised appointments booking system]. We do support this being made available to the GPs referring patients, where possible. But it is not mandatory and it is up to local areas to decide."